


Choose

by Howlingdawn



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode Tag: s05e12 Safe House, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 21:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19048555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Howlingdawn/pseuds/Howlingdawn
Summary: When Murphy's men kidnap Jake and Kevin, Holt is forced to make a painful choice.





	Choose

**Author's Note:**

> My binge continues and I've begun s6 but this hit me earlier today, because Kevin saving the day in the actual day was aMaZiNg, but... father & son angst is my kryptonite

Kevin was staring at him. Above the duct tape gagging him, his eyes were as wide as they ever got, and above that terrified look, his hands tightly gripped the rope that bound them.

Jake couldn’t stare at him. He dangled from the ceiling as well, gagged much like Kevin was, but his head lolled limply against his chest, his wrists carrying all his weight. A gashed sliced across his forehead, still dripping blood.

Raymond longed to go to them. To cross the space between them, free them, take Jake to the hospital he clearly needed.

Seamus Murphy stood there, blocking his path. His arms were loosely crossed, a confident sneer twisting his expression. “You really thought you could protect them.”

Raymond stiffened, suppressing the urge to raise his gun. Two of Murphy’s men were there as well, one beside each hostage, guns in hand. Jake and Kevin would be dead before he could eliminate the threats. “Release them.”

“That’s not how this works,” Murphy said. “I can’t have my payback without them.”

“They have nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, on the _contrary_ ,” Murphy said. He stepped back until he was between the bound men and put a hand on their shoulders. Raymond’s finger twitched against his gun, wanting only to shoot him until he stopped touching them. “Kevin here vowed to be a part of your life, didn’t he? _For better or for worse._ And Jake was pulled into this the moment you made the deal to protect him. Doesn’t help that you picked him to protect your husband.”

As if sensing people talking about him, Jake stirred. His eyelids flickered, but remained closed, and he started slowly struggling to get his feet under him. Kevin looked at him, shifting ever so slightly closer, and in that tiny movement, Raymond realized his husband had come to care for the younger man.

Whether Murphy realized that or not, he decided to sabotage Jake’s feeble efforts. He moved forward, shoving the men apart as he went. Kevin recovered quickly, but Jake wasn’t conscious enough yet, his weight jerking sharply against his wrists as he fell again. Raymond gave an internal wince of sympathy.

He refocused on Murphy. “What do you want?”

“Honestly, I was just going to kill your husband and be done with it,” Murphy answered. “But then you stuck him in the little safehouse with one of the cops you risked everything to save, and it got me thinking: Why _did_ you do that? Because I went directly to his girlfriend and even she turned me down. _After_ consulting you.

“So why would you turn around and take the info? It could just be you being a good boss. But when I started watching you after you made the deal, I started noticing this bond you seem to have with Peralta here. And that’s when it hit me: You think of him as your _son_ , don’t you?”

Raymond set his jaw.

Murphy stepped closer, eyes alight with malice. “Your silence is all the answer I need, Captain. If I needed you to answer at all.”

“What is your point?” Raymond demanded.

Murphy grinned wickedly. “My point is simple: I’ve decided to give you a choice.”

His two henchmen lifted their guns, pressing them to Jake and Kevin’s heads.

“One lives. One dies. Your decision.”

Raymond’s heart stopped. His world narrowed in an instant, until he saw only Jake and Kevin. Jake, on his feet, but just barely; his grip on his bonds was white-knuckled, limbs trembling as they struggled to bear his weight. Kevin, a civilian who never should have been in this situation, a civilian who had always disliked every cop but Raymond.

_Until now._

Kevin was shaking his head, pointing at Jake. Beside him, Jake was lifting his chin and setting his jaw, pointing insistently at Kevin.

“Ooh,” Murphy said, “look at that. Your son and your husband, both trying to tell you to save the other. Who will you choose?”

Logically, the choice was obvious. Jake was a detective who had signed up knowing that his job was to protect civilians at all costs, even his own life, and Raymond had known he could be sending his people to their deaths from the moment he was given his captaincy. Kevin was precisely that civilian they had both signed up to protect, even if it involved Raymond sacrificing one of his detectives to do so.

But his emotions rose up, choking him, strangling any hope he had of making the logical decision. Jake was doing everything he could to hide it, but in the parts of his eyes still cloudy from the concussion, Raymond could see his terror, could see tears fighting to make themselves known. And there was Kevin, still trying to get Raymond to trade his life for Jake’s, doing everything in his power to convince Raymond to protect a cop over his husband.

The choice should have been simple. Logical.

Jake Peralta made it anything _but_.

Raymond took a deep breath, calming his pounding heart, forcing himself to look away from the hostages and back at Murphy. “What if I refuse to choose?”

Murphy signaled. His men clicked their guns’ safeties off. “They both die. Now you have three seconds to _choose_.”

Raymond looked back at them.

“Three.”

 Kevin looked back at him, eyes soft with all the love in the world.

“Two.”

Jake tapped his ring finger, just where his wedding ring would sit come May, and the message was clear: _Tell Amy I love her._

“One.”

“Kevin. I choose Kevin.”

The gun went off.

Raymond woke up.

His eyes flew open to the sight of his bedroom. Kevin slept beside him, safe and peaceful. Raymond let out a breath, heartrate slowly calming as he remembered what had actually happened.

He remembered being told to choose, remembered the seconds being counted down. Then the door had banged open, sounding like a gunshot, and the rest of the squadron came streaming in. Raymond had taken advantage of Murphy’s surprise to slam the butt of his gun into the man’s head, in the same spot Jake was currently bleeding, while Jake and Kevin kicked away the men beside them. They were handcuffed within moments, guarded by a bristling Rosa with two guns and her knives on full display.

Then Raymond was holstering his gun, hurrying to untie Kevin, sharing a hug and a kiss the moment he was free. Terry helped free Jake, and he sank to the ground in Amy’s arms, his own arms coming up to clutch her as she held him close, pressing relieved kisses to his hair.

Everyone had walked out of that building on their own two feet, Jake’s concussion the only injury among them. Raymond should be relieved, enjoying the ability to spend the night with his husband again, secure in the knowledge that Jake was safe with his fiancée. And yet…

“Raymond.”

He turned his head to see Kevin looking at him. “Yes?”

“Go visit Peralta.”

“Why would you-”

“I have spent the last nine weeks learning for myself just how he wriggles his way into your heart,” Kevin said. “I understand now what he means to you, and you have not seen or spoken him since he left in the ambulance. Go see him.”

“Will you be all right?”

Kevin very nearly smiled. “I know you still have two cops stationed outside our house. Yes, Raymond, I will be all right.”

“I love you.”

It was sappy, but he needed to say it after today.

“I love you as well.”

Raymond stood, dressed, and drove to Jake and Amy’s place of residence. Despite the late – or early, depending on how one looked at it – hour, she answered promptly. “Captain!”

“Detective Santiago,” he greeted. “Is Peralta awake?”

“Um, yeah, he’s over here. Come in.”

He was on the couch, snacking on some cheese puffs, the indentation on the cushion beside him suggesting Amy had been sitting there until he knocked. “I’ll leave you two to talk,” she said, scurrying awkwardly away.

Raymond took his seat on the other end of the couch. “What brings you here, Daptain?”

Raymond looked at his wound, now neatly stitched and bandaged. “I simply wanted to check on your wellbeing.”

“My being is well,” Jake confirmed, popping another cheese puff into his mouth. “But annoyed that Amy keeps waking me up.”

“That is proper concussion protocol. Should you even be out the hospital?”

“Probably not,” he said lightly.

Raymond nodded, disappointed but not surprised.

Jake sighed, setting down his cheese puffs. “That’s not why you’re here.”

Raymond leaned back, clasping his hands together. “It is.”

“No, you’re here to make sure I’m ok with you picking Kevin over me.”

It was very easy most days to forget that Jake was genuinely a brilliant detective. Unfortunately, that never extended to the moments wherein Raymond truly wished he wasn’t. “I wasn’t going to-”

“I saw your lips starting to move before Rosa broke down the door,” Jake interrupted, looking at him. “You were making a K, not a J.”

Raymond lowered his gaze in shame. “I never should have-”

“Yes, you should have. We’re the protectors, and Kevin was our protectee. You were always going to choose him. And that’s ok.”

“But Kevin is _not_ the only person I care about,” Raymond blurted, looking back up at Jake, at the wound across his forehead. “I was so focused on Kevin that I… I forgot there were other people Murphy could target as well.”

Jake smiled softly. “I know, Daptain. I know because you hesitated.”

Raymond searched Jake’s expression, searching every millimeter of it for some hint of falsehood. But there was nothing. Only a raw honesty that, frankly, made him somewhat concerned. “How severe is your concussion?”

“Uh, dude was pretty mad I wouldn’t shut up about Die Hard, it’s probably pretty bad.”

And just like that, they lapsed back into their usual dynamic, Jake leaning back and grabbing his cheese puffs while Raymond blinked in utter dismay that this was his best detective. But when Amy returned, Jake scooted over to sit between them, and there was a new casualness in the way neither one _quite_ cared when the close quarters made them touch. They may even have welcomed the contact after the day’s events. Not that they would ever admit that.

Raymond spent the night helping Amy take care of Jake, and in the morning, when he still hadn’t run away or turned on him, he felt all the happier for it.


End file.
